Six original short plays by some of America's most celebrated playwrights, united by the theme of escaping limitations. The lineup includes works by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner John Patrick Shanley, Lyle Kessler, Bekah Brunstetter, and other distinguished writers, each exploring the ways people push past the boundaries that define and confine them. The evening offers a range of styles and tones, from comic to dramatic, intimate to expansive.
Presented at Theatre Row, Theatre 5. This production brings together a diverse roster of theatrical voices for an evening that celebrates the human drive toward transcendence.
Talkbacks: Apr 2 (directors), Apr 8 (playwrights incl. Shanley).
Get notified when the performance schedule is posted.
I caught the final performance of Transcendency Rising: Short Plays About Defying Limitation, presented by Theater Breaking Through Barriers at Theatre Five at Theatre Row, and I left genuinely glad I went and genuinely annoyed at myself for not going sooner.
Theater Breaking Through Barriers is Off-Broadway's leading theater company advancing artists with disabilities, and this evening brought together celebrated voices in American theater to explore transcendence, specifically the act of moving beyond challenging circumstances toward something greater. The playwrights include Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner John Patrick Shanley, Tony Award nominees Lyle Kessler and Bekah Brunstetter, alongside Cate Allen, Kathryn Grant, and Jeff Tabnick. That is a serious roster, and the work largely reflects it.
The plays offer moving, provocative, and often unexpected portraits of resilience, illuminating moments when individuals dare to transcend circumstance, expectation, and self-imposed boundaries. Most of them land. A couple don't, but since the run is over, there is no reason to name names. Even the weaker pieces were watchable, and none derailed the evening.
The company features performers with and without disabilities, embodying the belief that artistic excellence and disability are not mutually exclusive but mutually enriching. All performances were fully captioned with audio description throughout, a reminder of what inclusive theater can look like when a company builds it into the DNA of the production rather than treating it as an afterthought.
A loose but effective theme of wishing to be seen ties the works together, and when the evening is firing, that thread holds beautifully. I wish the run had been longer. Worth your time if it ever returns, and I will keep my eye on Theater Breaking Through Barriers from now on!
